


Psalm 72:6

by ghostofshe



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Caesar's Legion, Gen, Minor Violence, Rain, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 23:51:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14366409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostofshe/pseuds/ghostofshe
Summary: The rains follow Joshua even across the desert. The great unifying force that binds past with present, and casts a shroud over whatever future lies in wait for him.





	Psalm 72:6

**Author's Note:**

> A commission fic featuring scenes of Joshua Graham and the rain. Thank you for the support and for this beautiful request!

Psalm 72:6  
_“May he be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth.”_

~~

A gentle rain patters against the canvas of Joshua’s tent, drowning out the noise of the camp just beyond the meager walls. A small tear in the roof leaves droplets falling into a puddle on his floor, the clink of each drop landing echoing through the silence like a conversation. Voices of the past speaking to each other. Memories and holy messages all blending together into a clamor.

Joshua stacks books on his desk, brushes his thumb over the weathered covers. He had thought to sit outside and read his scripture today, but now instead he is left with his kerosene lamp and his strained vision, alone with his thoughts and the clamor of the storm.

It is a sort of unifier, the rain. A factor that links the fragments of a regretful past together.

It had rained when Edward had led his first conquest with Joshua at his side. Poured over their celebration, washing away blood and sand from his boots as he stared up at the gray sky. His hand aching from so long spent clutching his pistol.

That day was the first time he wondered if he could be forgiven. If he wanted to be.

Now, his bible sits buried beneath other books and maps and rolls of paper with lists and names. Now it rains whenever he feels drawn to the comfort of those words again. Now he has his answer.

~~

He’d needed something to believe in, after that day. The adrenaline of battle and bloodlust dying in the rain and leaving him cold and empty.

In the days that follow, a sort of rift seems to open inside his soul. A subtle wound he fails to notice until it has already begun to fester. The emptiness and rot slowly giving way into fire and rage. Whatever penance he feels he deserves now bleeds through his hands and into his enemies.

Still, he feels so empty. A ghost without his gun in his hand.

He needs something to believe in, and so Joshua follows Edward through Utah’s rains and the sandstorms of Arizona. Like a moth chasing a light through the darkness.

He wins the Legion’s battles and it fills him with a glow, a kind of peace he has not felt since before he first met Edward Sallow and Bill Calhoun a lifetime ago. Back when he used to believe in something higher than the gold and crimson flag, higher the misguided dreams of someone else who used to believe in good.

One evening he walks in the gold light of the setting sun, the fog rising off the river catching rays inside of it and blurring everything together. Beside him, Edward — _Caesar_ , as he likes to call himself— goes over his various stratagems for their next assault, intercutting with delighted remarks over the success of today’s battle. He lauds Joshua’s hard work, his straw colored curls a shining halo around his head as he delivers praises alongside requests.

The earlier storm has lightened some, and now men around them drag bodies through the resulting mud, struggling as their boots sink and squish into the soft earth. Edward swears under his breath, and walks the other way to try and avoid the worst of it.

Rather than following behind, Joshua approaches a pair of boys nearby, moving drums of ammunition rather than bodies. They pause to look up at him as he nears. They are so young, their faces cleaned by the rain, that for a moment he is too struck to speak as they wait for him to address them.

“Sir?” One of them asks. Cautiously.

He doesn’t like the way they look at him. With fear. They are right to be afraid, but it still sends a sting of anger through him. An unwanted reminder that this is the sum of his deeds. This is what God has made him. A symbol of power. A beacon for those the Legion saves to rally behind. His only purpose seems to be the nurturing of fear.

“Careful of those munitions," says Joshua, after a moment. His voice is hard and loud, and a few people nearby look towards him. “If we are short supplied because of clumsy hands and wet powder I will recall the faces of those responsible.”

The pair stare wide-eyed at him. They cannot be more than sixteen, either of them.

“Yes, domine,” says the one who had spoken before, hastily bowing his head as he and the other begin to move again.  
Joshua watches them make their retreat, stepping carefully through the mud sucking at their boots, neither of them dare to look back at him.

As the sky rumbles and beads of rain roll along the sides of his face, numbing his skin and making his hair lie flat against his scalp, Joshua wonders if the Lord really would make him this way. Wonders if this is not what he has made of himself, instead. Another of his blasphemies.

He doesn’t allow himself to dwell on it, instead he returns to his tent and digs up his scripture from the stack, trying to find the solace he has denied himself for far too long.

Just as he cracks the book, the sound of thunder rolls through his chest, followed by the roar of the clouds unleashing their torrent upon the world below. The hole in his tent begins to drip again and Joshua squints at the small words in the dim light of his tent for only a moment before he once again sets the book aside, his hand resting on the cover.

He is owed no solace. Is not worthy of forgiveness.

~~

A rare Mojave downpour seizes the night before Joshua is set to lead the assault on Hoover Dam. Sometimes Joshua wonders if the rains don’t follow him. Or pursue him. Waiting for the most opportune moments to strike at him, to wash the land clean of his sins, to overflow the rivers so they threaten to sweep him away with the blood and the ashes.

He sits by a failing torch in Caesar’s —he no longer can think of him as Edward— command tent, looking over the map sprawled out on the table. Positions marked off by little wooden pawns.

The small pencil marks on the map he had placed earlier, the ones indicating the sniper nests that will provide cover fire for the ground troops, are now blurry in the dim light. He finds it difficult to focus, troubled by the approaching dawn. Restless. Feeling smothered by the humidity outside and the warmth of the tent.

The spirits of the men have been dampened along with the earth and Joshua is as impatient with their attitudes as he is understanding of them. It is not a promising beginning for a war. For the Heavens to unleash a punishment before beginning the march has even begun feels ominous in a way that shakes the superstitious troops down to their very cores. No words Joshua has offered have managed to lighten the dark mood sweeping through the ranks.

A small rustle of the tent flap rouses Joshua from his musings, and he glances back over his shoulder to see Dead Sea snapping him a brief salute.

“ _Salve_ , Dead Sea.” Greets Joshua.

Water drips from the man’s shoulder pads, beading along the feathers of his helmet. He looks exhausted. Lost.  
  
“ _Ave_ , Legatus,” he offers in return.

“You’re looking for Caesar, I presume,” Joshua casts about the table for something to occupy his hands. “I’m afraid you just missed him.”

“Actually, I had hoped to speak with you,” says Dead Sea, his voice wavers with the cold.

Joshua picks up a book from the top of the pile, sets it aside.

“My men, they are troubled. Afraid that the conditions put us at a disadvantage,” continues Dead Sea. Joshua looks up as the boy removes his helmet, shakes out the dampened ends of his hair. “Some talk of wanting the march delayed.”

“We will march at dawn, as Caesar has ordered,” Joshua almost sighs the words. He had raised the suggestion of postponement himself, earlier. To no avail. “It is in God’s hands now.”

Dead Sea is quiet a moment. “You sound troubled.”

Joshua leans back in his chair and sighs, listening to the rain beating against the side of the tent. It sounds like fabric shredding, like the rain is shrapnel and they are all caught beneath its unforgiving onslaught. He shifts a few things aside, tosses an empty clip of ammo into the crate near his boots.

From beneath all the clutter, his bible finds its way once more into his hands. For the first time in far too long. He flips it open to no particular page, allowing the heavy cover to thump against the table.

“Children of your Father in heaven,” he reads from the page. The candles seeming to brighten themselves, making the words appear sharper. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

Dead Sea smiles, a glint of nostalgia in his tired eyes. They used to do this often, when Dead Sea was young and and ever-present as Caesar kept him under his parental eye. He wonders how much of it Dead Sea remembers. Back then, he was still small enough to sit on Joshua’s knee and turn the pages for him, mimicking words in that way that children do.

“I always liked Matthew,” says Dead Sea.

He smiles, flips the book shut again. “Perhaps these words would ease the minds of your men, as well.”

Dead Sea shrugs, “if they only listened to anything I say.”

Joshua laughs quietly at that. The boy has a brightness about him, something sincere that has always brought him reassurance. He had not realized how badly he’d needed this comfort.

At least in saving the boy, he and Caesar can both claim one good thing to their names.

“They do listen,” Joshua reassures. “Though sometimes it is difficult for people to truly hear any voices besides their own.”

“I suppose it’s something you’re used to, by now—” Dead Sea’s words are interrupted with a yawn, which he hastily covers with his hand. “Apologies.”

“The hour is late, you should get some rest.”

The decanus nods his agreement, “you as well,” he says, turning towards the tent flap. He pushes it aside and pauses, smiles back over his shoulder. “Looks like the rain is stopping.”

Joshua smiles back, and the boy ducks outside. The hammering of the storm slowing with each splash of his boots, fading into the distance. He studies his bible on the table as he listens to the quiet slowly take its place beside him. All his earlier tension evaporating into the air and floating up to the ceiling.

Maybe tomorrow he will gain his forgiveness, after all.


End file.
